Half Full or Half Empty?

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Old School

After all these years, someone finally asked me a question.

We were so spoiled at Virgin. (In a good way.) The poor schmucks working at most publicly held game publishing companies have nowhere near the freedom we had as a privately held company owned by a billionaire (Richard Branson). To be sure, the company was run with strict financial controls, which I liked quite a bit.

I used to present these incredibly detailed budget plans to Robert Deveraux, who was in charge of the Virgin publishing section of the Virgin Group, and which included us. He'd generally approve them in 24 hours. He once said I was the best manager in the Virgin Group. People asked me why he approved my requests - sometimes for significant sums of money - so quickly. My answer was of course that I presented well thought out plans... which was true.

I learned about budgeting from my wife. Without years of practice tracking our cash outlays, generally down to the penny, I would not have had the experience to produce such detailed budget plans. On a trip to Walt Disney World around 1990, I kept track of every penny. I showed my spreadsheet to David Bishop, who wanted to know how much it would cost to go to Walt Disney World, and who saw that I had noted the price of a two-pack of Tums for $0.27. The funny thing is that I thought there was nothing special about that level of detail!

Ah, the good old days ...

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites

I always thought a flash-heavy web site was a bit of a waste of effort. It just slows a person down. First the download takes time, second just figuring out how to navigate the site takes time, and finally, ... sometimes getting Flash installed takes time.

Light Sabre

I continue to rethink the nature of this site. Most likely I will fork off (that's Unix talk) several sister-sites. I am getting pissed enough I might even start writing about politics!

In the meantime, this is a great Star Wars fan video:

Your Father's Light Sabre

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Pandora

Check out this radio station I created:

http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh15928173

or this one that Andrew Berg created:

http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh12424850


Both were created with Pandora, the worldest greatest internet radio station.

Pandora uses the database from the Music Genome Project to find music that you will like!

Interestingly, I'd been thinking recently about the tune "Green Onions" by Booker T and the M.G.s, and wondering where I would find more music like that.

Andrew told me about Pandora, so I created a station based on that one tune, and then dug listening to similar music for an hour!

I used to do this sort of thing with Music Match Radio, which tries to do the same thing, but not as well, and plus it costs a little $$ to get decent quality.

The music quality at Pandora, by the way, is excellent.

And the UI, built entirely in a web browser, is excellent.

And the accessability is excellent - it's so easy to get started.

Two big "thumbs up"* for Pandora.

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

*I think "Two big thumbs up" might be a registered trademark of Roger Ebert.

Airsoft Tips - by Thomas

My son Thomas (age 10) wrote this and would like to share it with everyone:

These are tips on Airsoft safety.

A basic tip for safety: Do not do an airsoft game where you’re shooting each other. To make this a lot safer, wear some kind of eye protection because BB’s can hurt and do something really bad damage to your eye. If you do not want to feel any pain while you’re doing an airsoft battle, wear at least a jacket for armor. That should block the BB’s.

By the way, if you want a full auto airsoft gun, when you get onto the airsoft web site and you want to order one, look at the blue letters above a picture to see what kind it is.

By the way, when you’re ordering keep in mind you could have at least five more dollars because of shipping and handling. So look at the price tags and think about it before you click on the order button.

Look at letters next to a picture and you should find out stuff about a picture and what you could order.

Keep in mind that some Airsoft guns, in fact quite a few, you may have to cock every shot. If you don’t know quite what I just said means, it means that every time you shoot, you may have to cock. It’s not for all of them.

By the way, you may not want to order ones that cost $300 at max because if you look hard enough, you can find a full auto as well. If you find something called a gas-powered gun, it means you have to buy gas for it every time you run out. The benefit of this means that you can get semi-auto instead of cock, then shoot, cock, then shoot, you can just shoot, shoot, shoot, but it’s not full auto. Keep in mind that they can cost from $20 to $70.

Original Light

I posted a poem before, as best as I could remember it, about my youthful disappointment of certain things while getting my Ph.D.

I found the original version while digging through some boxes yesterday:


Looking for Quality
In all the
Right Places:
Institutions of Higher Learning.

We're fooled.
Mediocrity is the rule.
It is great to be bland.

The Ivory Tower,
Symbol of Truth,
Is made of
Painted Stone
And populated by ants.

Looking for Quality,
Role-Models, Truth, Heroes,
We are fooled by the sheen
Of the Ivory Tower.

You can't tell the
Difference, until
  You are
    Right
     Up
       Close.
Stone, Ivory... What does it
Matter? It all
Crumbles sooner or later.

Forget the tower:
It's only reflecting.
Go for the
Original Light.


-- Stephen Hunter Willson

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #7 - Death March

This piece - Death March - was played through in real time.

It's mostly digital synths, layered up, and then recorded to a four-track analog tape recorder.

The thing I like about it is that it doesn't end! Every time it seems like it is about to end, it keeps going! Just like a real software death march! Excellent!

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Acting!

A child shows you how to act:

Surprised:



Sad:



Excited:



Angry:



Incredulous:




© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #6 - On the Virtual Trail

This piece was created in one pass when a manager I worked for at Northrop, Jim Reiss, loaned me a piece of equipment. I don't remember the model number but it was something like TX-601 or TX-106. This began my transition to digital equipment. I had my D-50 but I didn't really consider it that digital, because it had an overall warm sound to it. Technically, getting the D-50 would have been the start of my transition to the digital world.

But anyway, I layered all of my MIDI equipment together into one big stack (which was about four modules total), and then played this live in one pass.

When it was done, I thought, that sounds like "On the Trail" from The Grand Canyon Suite. I listened to my Tomita version of "On the Trail" and I couldn't really find this sound, but in my mind, it is still inspired by that piece, so I have renamed it for posting here as "On the Virtual Trail".


© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #5 - Space Wine

Space Wine.

This one might be good to help you fall asleep.

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #4 - Dance with a Polygon

Dance with a Polygon

This was probably composed in the early 1990s on cheap analog equipment and recorded to a four track cassette tape machine. It's generally inspired by this album:

The Essential Perrey & Kingsley

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #4 - Flight and Landing

The fun of the old analog equipment was all of the filtering you could do. You can do all that in modern digital equipment, of course, but somehow it sounds different, even when the exact analog filters are being modeled. I think the reason for that is that you can give all digital stuff a really hard edge, and so people do, and that's why most modern digital filters sound different from old analog filters - they are used differently.

Here's a tune with lots of slow filters.

Flight and Landing

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Experimental Music #3 - Soaring

This piece, Soaring, if you can stand to listen to it, is interesting for two reasons. One, it has lots of old school analog effects in the music. Secondly, it uses the 'bender' doo-dad which lets you play notes that don't exist on the keyboard.

Also, and this is true for everything in the Experimental Music series, it was performed straight into a four-track tape machine, without any planning. This required a fair amount of concentration. I had to remember everything I had done before. One benefit of that kind of concentration is mercifully short pieces of music.

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Hollywood: DreamWorks Sale—Why the Dream Didn't Work - Newsweek Periscope - MSNBC.com

Hollywood: DreamWorks Sale—Why the Dream Didn't Work - Newsweek Periscope - MSNBC.com:

"But perhaps the primary failure at DreamWorks was simply one of will. Of the three founders, only Katzenberg wanted to actually head a studio; now he is, at DreamWorks Animation. Spielberg's first love has always been directing, and he has spent the last year on sets making 'War of the Worlds' and 'Munich' back to back. And Geffen has always been upfront about his distaste for the movie business. What both men wanted, it seems in retrospect, was the power and freedom of owning a studio, not the burden of running one. And who can blame them? If you were Steven Spielberg, would you want to sit behind a desk, fretting about profit-and-loss statements? Didn't think so."

I had breakfast with Jeffrey Katzenberg on the morning of his last day with Disney. We met at the Penninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. The meeting was set up by Bill Block, an agent and my business partner at the time, and his boss at ICM at the time, Jim Wiatt. Wiatt was friends with Katzenberg from way-back. You could tell because he snatched a newspaper that was sticking out of Katzenberg's back pocket and hit him with it. Most people in Hollywood can't do that.

We talked a long time, by Hollywood standards, about the video game business. Over an hour I think.

Katzenberg said lots of things I won't repeat, but one worth repeating was that, as he was about to leave Disney, people were offering him incredible sums of money to start something. He said something about people offering to drive a Brinks truck up with a billion dollars in it.

And that's what happened. And Dreamworks SKG was founded.

And now it's sold, but Katzenberg gets to hold onto his first love, running an animation studio.

Which is good for us, because he was the powerhouse behind that run of great Disney animated hits, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Pocahontas would have been better if he had stayed around to re-edit the hell out of it, as he is prone to do. So we can look forward to more years of clever and funny and adult-tolerable animated films, with a higher proportion of potty-humor than the Pixar films.

Woot!

Next Generation - Game Boss Shelley Day Jailed

Next Generation - Game Boss Shelley Day Jailed:

"Shelley Day, former boss of games publishers Hulabee and Humongous Entertainment has been sentenced to two years in prison for fraud."

Wow. I really liked her. I only met her once or twice when I worked at Cavedog but she seemed like a terrific person.

Experimental Music #2 - Stomach Gurgling

I notice a few songs in my collection focused on bodily feelings. Here is another one - Stomach Gurgling.

This one is fun in that it uses the doo-dad (Portamento) that runs up and down the keyboard making whoops and what not.

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Put employees first: Sir Richard Branson

Put employees first: Sir Richard Branson:

"Outlining the Virgin management mantra, Sir Richard said happy employees keep customers happy. A lot of happy customers would create a lot of happiness to shareholders as well. Without good people, corporations are worth nothing. And to motivate people, corporations should create a fun environment to work. Employees should feel that it is a crusade, not just another job. "

Some people think that servicing the needs of shareholders, employees, and customers is a balancing act, but Sir Richard says that's wrong. It's more of a dependency graph: happy shareholders need a company with happy customers which are created by happy employees.

I know a company that puts customers first, and it has had 50% turnover in the last couple of years. Amazing.

Experimental Music #1 - Intestinal Disorder

Way back in the depths of time - I'll say around 1984 - 1990 - I had a bunch of analog synthesizer equipment I liked to play with. I made some really bad and/or strange and/or experimental music, depending on your point of view. I prefer to call it experimental, although 'bad' might also be a suitable description.

I offer here my first posting of bad and/or experimental music: 'Intestinal Disorder'.

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Storage

It's strange, but as I look back on my career, I see that it has been influenced more by storage factors than processor factors. This is true going all the way back to NES games where with good compression you could double or triple the content that went into a cartrige.

Now I'm trying to imagine a world with these little microdrives (like in the iPod) in everything. And Wi-Fi connecting them all.

The word of the day will be replication. The idea will be to allow your data (and licensed music, movies, books even) to circulate in your own microdrive eco-system but not migrate to your neighbor's, unless he has a license for the content as well.

It's not immediately obvious to most people but the secret to making all of this work well is to simple make many devices write-only. That's what the iPod is supposed to be - you can store your tunes onto an iPod but you can't get them back off to give to a buddy. (On the other hand, your buddy can bring his iPod to your computer and you can give him a copy of your music. But that's a lot more work than simply having iPods talk to each other and exchange music.)

The thing about the current file sharing world is that it is so easy to share files. The system just needs a little friction so that it is easier to buy the stuff online than to transfer it without a license. And the DRM systems need less friction within a 'local ecosystem' so that once you have licensed some music or a movie or a book, you can listen, look at it, or read it, on any device you want.

I bought the Firefly DVDs because everyone told me to watch them before watching Serenity, the movie spin-off from the short-lived TV series. So I did. $30 from Amazon - pretty good! Now i have this 4 CD set... and quite frankly, I'm happy to loan it to anyone that comes along. I'm not going to be watching it over and over again. Is that illegal? (I hope not!) You can imagine a situation where four families get together and make a DVD club, where they get a DVD and share it. They would have some rule where the family that gets the DVD first rotates in a list. That would save them 75% on DVD costs, but also cut the sales of DVDs 75%, which would be painful for the movie companies. Really popular DVDs would transcend this rule, of course, because each family would want to own their own 'Finding Nemo', as some titles do bear watching over and over and over again by the kids.

And I bought, for $1.99, the first episode of Nightstalker from the iTunes store. I finally watched it and meh. But what I am supposed to do with this big file that I never want to watch again? Delete it, I supposed, but the iTunes store only allows ONE download of a video file. If you want to watch on multiple computers you have to copy it around to different machines yourself. I guess this is to save on bandwidth costs for the iTunes store. But that's kind of lame.

*Sigh*. Digital licensing is complicated.

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.